ARC review: The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten

The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten

Published March 10th 2015

I wasn’t really sure what this book was about when I received this ARC. The cover is kinda cool with the bright yellow and the boy with the super hero mask. I was very tentative when I looked on GoodReads to see what the synopsis was.

The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B is about a support group of teenagers with obsessive-compulsive order. It focuses on a character named Adam who is almost 15. His mom and dad are divorced and he has his hands full with new stepsiblings. He meets a girl named Robyn at his OCD support group and he falls in love with her right away. Adam struggles to keep his life together with his new family and his OCD.

The first four pages of this book are indescribable. I wasn’t not prepared for the complete disaster that is Adam’s inner monologue. It took about 26 pages for me to get my thoughts together but the plot didn’t get better.

I felt like the only redeemable quality about this book is how it teaches the reader about OCD. I’d read OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu in 2013 so I knew about OCD and how hard it is for the people who have it so that little nugget of information so almost completely irrelevant to me.

It was insanely difficult to relate to the characters. Not only because of their OCD but just in general. I did feel really bad for Adam at times and I didn’t fall in love with him or the other characters. I just couldn’t connect with them.

The writing was really poor, in my opinion. Lack of description and just overall weirdness didn’t do this book any favors. The third person narrative felt choppy and had so many mistakes. It would go back and forth from “Adam’s mom” to “Mrs. Ross” when referring to the same person. A sentence that really messed with my head was “Adam must have nodded, because they did.” Just…What? I was, and still am, so confused by that. What does that even mean? I’ve seen a couple other reviewers that have also been left confused by that sentence.

Overall, this is book is really boring and has no substance to the plot. I couldn’t connect with the characters or become emotionally invested in anything. The only redeemable quality about this book is how it might teach people about OCD and how serious is it. But OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu also does that and I liked that book a lot more. If you or someone you know has OCD or OCD is relevant to you, this book will be different for you. You might like it or love it. You’ll probably be able to relate to the characters in ways I couldn’t. This book has a particular group of people that it will really hit home for but it just wasn’t for me.